Chase Bank To Vacate Amarillo’s Chase Tower

In a couple of weeks, a familiar site will disappear from downtown Amarillo. The Chase bank sign atop the city’s tallest building will vanish forever, as the national mega-bank consolidates its local operations in south Amarillo.

As The Amarillo Globe-News reports, the chase departure is only one of a number of high-profile evacuations of the building in recent months. Xcel Energy and West Texas A&M University have also vacated or plant to leave their spaces in the tower.

Aaron Emerson, the tower’s leasing agent, told the Globe-News there’s no cause for alarm that the tower will go dark. Emerson says he’s seeing steady rental activity, including leasing the first-floor space currently operate by Chase to” an established Amarillo bank” by mid-March. The building will no longer be known as Chase Tower going forward, though officials have not yet released the tower’s new moniker.

In addition to the leasing activity, Chase Tower is also in the midst of several renovation projects.

A massive crowd gathered in a large dirt field in downtown Amarillo yesterday to witness the groundbreaking of the city’s new baseball stadium. Mayor Ginger Nelson delivered a heartfelt speech to the throngs who had amassed on a chilly February afternoon.

Mayor Nelson was joined by the team’s new general manager, as well as D.G. Elmore and his father Dave Elmore, owners of the group who are moving the new AA baseball team from its former home in San Antonio.

On Tuesday night, 1,200 people gathered in Amarillo’s magnificent downtown Globe News Center for the Performing Arts for the premier of Bomb City, a film depicting the 1997 vehicular murder of an Amarillo punk at the hands of a popular “prep.”

The event was sold out, and the crowd consisted of an intriguing mixture of Amarillo’s elites as well as former and current punks, artists, and rabble-rousers.

The school will now be known simply as Lee Elementary School. The school’s name had been a touch point in the community, where many parents felt that the school being named after a Confederate General would ostracize students of color.